'Great Applications for Business School' provides a flexible, practical system for enabling business school applicants to find their applications' central theme, brainstorm their essays' raw material using personal 'data-mining' techniques, craft an outline using theme and evidence sentences, and write, revise, and edit effective essay drafts. Bodine provides detailed strategies for answering the most common MBA admissions essay topics--from goals, accomplishments, and "self-revelation" essays to diversity, leadership and teamwork, failure, and creative or multimedia topics. "Great Applications" includes practical guidelines for understanding what schools actually ask, choosing the appropriate stories for each essay type, and structuring essays so they provide context, analysis, and the all-important takeaways. The foundational material that earned "Great Application Essays for Business School" GMATClub.com's "Best MBA Book" award in 2010 remains the core of this new edition.

But the second edition--30% larger than the first--also contains substantially new material: * Forty-four actual, complete essays or admissions documents (versus 22 in the first edition) written by admitted applicants to the very best business schools (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago, Tuck, Columbia, London, Kellogg, INSEAD, and MIT Sloan, among others). * Treatment of the newest trend in admissions essays: creative, PowerPoint, and multimedia essays. * Ten case studies showing how real applicants with specific challenges overcame their admissions obstacles to gain admission to top programs. * Five "Put Yourself on the Couch" question sets that will spark the kind of reflection and analysis from which truly self-aware essays can emerge. * Extended appendixes on admissions interviews (containing sample interview responses) and wait-list letters (featuring before-and-after versions of two successful letters).